New defamation suit filed against Cosby by accuser
More of Bill Cosby's accusers, stymied at pursuing criminal charges, are turning to civil suits for defamation in their efforts to make him pay for alleged sexual assaults going back decades.
A seventh lawsuit against Cosby, and the fourth alleging Cosby and his ex-lawyer, Martin Singer, defamed accusers while denying their accusations, was filed Monday by Kristina Ruehli, one of nearly 60 women who have accused the entertainment icon of drugging and sexually assaulting them in encounters dating as far back as the mid-1960s.
According to her lawyer, Megan Deluhery, Ruehli, who lives in New Hampshire, filed a federal lawsuit in Massachusetts, saying Cosby falsely accused her of lying when she came forward last year and said he assaulted her in 1965.
"In making the false and defamatory statements, Mr. Cosby held Mr. Ruehli up to public scorn and ridicule, injured her good name and reputation and caused her severe emotional distress," her lawyers say in the complaint, filed in federal court in Springfield, near where Cosby has a home.
Deluhery said Rhehli believes that Cosby and Singer, by referring to accusations "50 years ago," were talking about her. Their use of the words “fantastical” and “past the point of absurdity,” she argues, amounts to a deliberate effort to defame her as mendacious.
"Through the defamation lawsuit, Ms. Ruehli stands ready to tell her story, under oath, to a jury of her peers and allow them to pass judgment and affirm that Ms. Ruehli’s account, like so many others, is true, and the only other person in the room that night in 1965 surely knows it," Deluhery said.
It's the second defamation suit filed in federal court in Springfield; another suit filed last year by three other Cosby accusers has been progressing through the legal system despite the Cosby legal team's efforts to block it.
Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Mastroianni rejected Cosby's bid to dismiss the case, delivering another legal blow to Cosby's defense team.
In addition, ex-model and TV host Janice Dickinson, another Cosby accuser, has filed another defamation suit in California, where a judge recently ruled against Cosby, ordering that he and his ex-lawyer will have to submit to a deposition in the case.
Another defamation lawsuit has been filed by a Pittsburgh woman, targeting Cosby, Singer and Cosby's wife of five decades, Camille. Renita Chaney Hill says they all defamed her by denying her accusation, made a year ago, that Cosby drugged and raped her repeatedly during the years 1983 through 1987, after she met him as a teenager on an educational TV show in Pittsburgh.
Ruehli, 72, who came forward to accuse Cosby a year ago, was 22 when she worked as a secretary for a talent agency that had Cosby as a client. She was invited to his home to celebrate a taping of Hollywood Palace and arrived to find she was one of only two guests.
Ruehli says Cosby gave her cocktails, which she believes contained drugs, and she lost consciousness. She says she woke up naked in bed to find Cosby attempting to force her into oral sex. She said she pulled away to vomit and drove herself home, and never saw him again.
At the time she came forward, telling her story to Philadelphia magazine and to CNN, she said she wanted to tell her story, her "15 minutes of — not fame — shame," to help other potential victims.
In her lawsuit, Ruehli says Cosby's then-lawyer, Singer, responded to her story by issuing a "false and defamatory statement" in strongly denying Cosby did anything wrong.
Cosby has not been charged with a crime; most of the accusations against him are so old that criminal statutes of limitation long ago expired.
Contributing: The Associated Press